Link Love (06/10/2012)

News Across the World

Burundi: ““I cannot go to a gynaecologist. If I do I’ll have problems with my husband,” says a pregnant Aicha. Like her, many Muslim women in Burundi are not allowed to be treated by male doctors. It is forbidden. This means that in a country with only three female gynaecologists, access to specialized healthcare for Muslim women is limited.” Pregnant Muslim women have it toughter in Burundi – RNW

Pakistan: “Nusrat Mochi, now 25, left her parents’ home one day to go to work and never returned. Instead of starting a job as a domestic worker, she ran away to begin a new life, against her family’s wishes, with a husband of her choosing rather than the one they had chosen for her. Her parents’ wrath has trailed her ever since.” Some Pakistani Women Risk All to Marry for Love – NY Times

Thought-provoking

“Victim is the new “bitter,” a slur frequently hurled at women when I was growing up. The women called bitter in our community had suffered everything from spousal abuse and betrayal to being raped by their pastors. And all that they were asking for was justice or at least to have someone bear witness to their suffering. Instead they were accused of having a spiritual disease called “bitterness” that could only be alleviated through forgiveness. Conveniently, forgiveness also meant shutting up. Even now we talk about bitterness as a moral failing or emotional problem. What we are actually saying is that there is a maximum amount of time that victims are allowed to be angry, that there is an expiration date on moral outrage.” Being A Victim Does Not Mean That You Have Failed to Take Personal Responsibility – Role / Reboot

“Purity peddlers construct a false universe where there are pure virgins who wait until marriage, and then there are slutty whores who are going home with different men every night of the week. The truth is that most adults will have a great many important relationships in their lives – some of those relationships will be romantic, and some of those will be sexual. That’s a good thing: our relationships with other people, sexual or not, are how we grow, evolve and learn about ourselves. They’re how we figure out what love is, what we like physically and emotionally, and how to negotiate our own needs with someone else’s. Despite the claims of the wait-till-marriage camp, waiting to have sex won’t protect you from heartache, frustration or love lost. But a variety of fulfilling relationships, sexual and not, will make you a more well-rounded, compassionate and self-assured person.” The moral case for sex before marriage – Jill Filipovic – The Guardian

“For a crushed and furious partner, for heartbroken children, it’s cruel to prescribe a timetable for healing. Forgiveness is a gift, not a right. At the same time, it’s not easy to wish a lifetime of misery on the people who hurt us. Most of us understand that good things can and do evolve out of tragic, cruel, or dishonest beginnings. My father was wrong to cheat on my mother—but he did so to be a superb husband to the dear woman with whom he cheated, and the best possible papa to all of his children. The wonderful example of that relationship doesn’t erase all of my childhood pain that came as a result of my parents’ divorce. It does, however, provide me with overwhelming evidence that what began in furtive betrayal can end in an honest and public joy so strong it warms all who witness it.” Should We Be Happy For Cheaters Who Find Love Again? – Role / Reboot

Religion

“Many evangelicals and fundamentalists – though not all – chalk mental problems up to demonic possession or influence. They even believe that depression itself is caused by demonic possession or influence. As a teen, I rationalized that this explained how common depression was among people in “the world” – they were empty and without Christ, and subject to demonic influence and even possession, so it was no wonder! What I didn’t realize was the selection bias involved, and for several reasons.” Demons v. Psychology: Possession and Depression – Love, Joy, Feminism

“The teachings of the purity culture led me to believe that I owed my husband sex, that it was his due, and that if I didn’t give him sex, well, he would look elsewhere and I would be at least partially to blame. I was taught that men (unlike women) needed sex about three times a week in order to be fulfilled, and that it was my job – my duty – as his wife to do this for my husband. Or else he might, you know, cheat.” The Purity Culture and Sex as a “Duty” – Love, Joy, Feminism

“A church leader called me in to have a meeting with him. I was barely able to tell him what happened. He told me, “girls like you shouldn’t go out at night like that.” I thought he was right. He made me repent. I repented for being violently raped. I repented for getting pregnant.” A Rape Survivor’s Story – Dispatches from the Culture Wars

“Both I and another woman I know were told that we weren’t raped, because we were supposed to submit to men, and, both of us being single and not living with our fathers, our authorities were the men in the church. Therefore, for us to not give consent to a man in the church that had “needs” was rebellion, and if we wouldn’t consent to the sex, he was entitled to take it by force because he had “needs” that women were created to fulfil for him. Yes, despite the fact that all these churches preach pre-marital abstinence, we were also told we should have submitted to the men.” Fundies and Rape – Katy-Anne Wilson

Equality

“Particularly among radicals, there remains an ugly tendency to see feminism as being a bourgeois white woman’s phenomenon. The insistence that women’s liberation is anti-revolutionary, or insignificant, or just so much liberal navel-gazing, allows rape culture to thrive in far too many radical political and ethnic organizations. And brave young women like Dinah get raped and tossed aside.” Why Some Activist Groups Tolerate Rapists – Role / Reboot

“In the present, it seems people see feminists as angry women just looking for something to be angry about, they are women who can’t take a joke, women who are bitter towards one ex-boyfriend and are taking it out on all of mankind. Stereotypes and incorrect assumptions have the power to destroy a movement so it’s important to talk about them and rid people of these beliefs about what a feminist is or isn’t.” Dealing With a New Type of Feminist Stereotype – f bomb

“If women choose to change their last name in whatever form of their husband’s or be identified as “Mrs.,” then as a feminist I feel that is their rightful choice. But, I can’t help but be deeply saddened when that choice is because such women are so eager to be identified as married and/or through their husbands. Women have championed so long for equal status, so when did it become OK not to champion our own identities?” I Refuse to be a ‘Mrs.’ – Role / Reboot

Beauty & Body Image

Inspirational

“If you look very deep underneath your impulse to wait, to prepare more, to hold back — you’ll find the belief that by sharing your voice freely, without planning or control, you could “make a fool of yourself.” You could be met with painful criticism. Judgement. A lack of love.
That’s true. You could. And I’m sure in the past you have.
But honey, there was nothing wrong with you or what you had to say. The problem was out there in the culture — a culture which remains blind to the gifts that each human being has to share, a culture that has made up stories about our not-enoughness, a culture which judges people who then pass on that painful judgement to others.” The Art of Leaping – Tara Sophia Mohr

“Why do I create work just to throw it away? Well, it’s a hack. The more work I do, the more positive outliers I’ll have. Let’s say that I’m a slightly above average writer. In a week, I’ll write seven posts. If I were to rate them on a scale from 1 to 10, I’d say that the distribution looks like this: 3 5 5 7 7 8 9. The average of those is 6.5, which sounds about right to me. So if I were to sit down twice a week, write a post and publish it, maybe I’d average a 7 (because probably if I wrote a 3 I would either skip the week or write something else). However, by writing seven posts a week, my published average goes up to an 8.5, because I only publish the 8 and 9.” Throw Away Your Work – Tynan

“There are other problems, of course — you still need to do the work. But the frustrations, stress, anger, irritation, feelings of overwhelm … those are all caused by holding on, and they’re in our minds. We also hold on to things that happened earlier — something someone did that wasn’t nice, a meeting where we said something embarrassing, a mistake we made on our project — and of course this only compounds the pain, keeps the pain replaying on an endless loop.” The Zen of Work – zen habits

Professional

“Federal law prohibits pay distinctions between men and women but has loopholes big enough to march a battalion of advantaged men through.
The government isn’t going to level the playing field for women. What can you do for yourself?
Learn how to negotiate for better pay.” What You Can Do About the Gender Wage Gap – Role / Reboot

“The alternative to the passion hypothesis says that having enjoyable, meaningful work doesn’t come from following a preexisting passion, but from building career capital. In other words, becoming so good that you get to dictate the terms of your own life.” Don’t Follow Your Passion – Scott H Young